For years, I have been here writing in these columns about everything except politics (I just can’t).
And, for years, I’ve heard from readers, be it about a shared frustration with squirrels in their bird feeders or concern about how many layers to wear to a Bills game or (see below) their favorite places to curl up with a good book.
Given the glorious opportunity to write, I’ve been able to celebrate with you the happy moments in Rochester life, the sad and scary moments, as well.
This was especially true for me during the pandemic, when for months I wrote short daily takes on what it was like when the world shut down. Readers let me know how they were coping. Connections were made.
Now, that connection won’t be quite the same.
I won’t be writing
a Sunday column, the column you’re reading now. Rather, I’ll be assembling a larger monthly package, shuffling and connecting the individuals in my list of Remarkable Rochesterians.
Started in 2010, that list has grown to nearly 700 names. It needs some TLC.
The Remarkables include well-known movers and shakers. And there are hundreds of others who are remarkable, but not so well-remembered.
Given so many fascinating lives, it should be fun and enlightening to gather a few of them in a room each month and see what they have in common and what their lives tell us about Rochester and the world we live in.
So I’ll be up to that, out of trouble, working hard, keeping busy. No need for an intervention.
But before I end this column, thanks to all of you who have been so kind through the years.
The column writing got started in 1992 when Keith Moyer, the paper’s editor, did me a huge favor by removing me as managing editor of the Democrat and Chronicle. I won’t say I was fired. Rather, I’ll say I was reassigned and given the nebulous job of senior editor.
The beauty of the title was that no one, including me, knew what a senior editor did. But the title allowed me to return to reporting and writing, the reasons I had left a college teaching post in the first place.
Since then, I’ve written news and columns in Local, then Features, then Sports, then Local again and now Arts.
The bouncing about, even in retirement, might have been an indication that the editors weren’t quite sure what it was that I was doing. (Full disclosure: I wasn’t always sure myself.)
I wasn’t a home-improvement columnist, passing on tips on how to wire your microwave. Nor was I a food columnist testing recipes. Even when I was in Sports, I tended to write about what happened in the parking lot rather than in the stadium.
Regardless, despite my whack-a-mole career, there’s a constant. I keep popping up.
But on the eve of this latest reassignment, thanks especially to Laura Nichols, the editor at the Democrat assigned to watch over me. Laura’s retiring, off to other projects. She’ll be terrific.
Thanks also to Cindy, my wife and first reader. For years, she has caught mistakes before they go out the door, just as she has made cameos in the column. She’s the best.
And thanks to all of you, the friends I know and the friends I have never met. We’ve had fun, and we’ll have fun again. Oft-reassigned, I don’t tend to go away. See you next month.
Reading
P.S. Last week I proposed that we all have favorite places to read. The early emails prove me right.
Jill Johnson reads beneath the boughs of her 200-year-old oak tree, Annie Oaktree. John McCarty can be found reading under an awning with an adult beverage at his side.
Jessie Lazeroff has a reading-friendly swivel chair in her living room. Jim Swarts does a lot of reading at his kitchen table. Mike Washington has a “custom-built leather couch,” perfect for reading.
Pam Heneghan can sit on her sofa with a book and a cup of tea and look out on her bird feeders and any deer that might be in her yard.
Sitting on a porch, David Dwyer can read and look out on Conesus Lake, even sometimes in winter. Speaking of water, Barbara Scanlan sometimes does her reading sitting on a folding chair beside the Erie Canal.
And Kathy Wesley championed another kind of reading, listening to audiobooks. “My ears may suffer,” she wrote, “but my reading list keeps growing.”
Priscilla Brown also made a case for audiobooks, though be careful: “I also listen in the car,” she wrote, “which resulted in a speeding ticket because I was so engrossed I missed the speed limit change.”
From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott has written Remarkable Rochester about who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write to him at Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: A familiar Rochester voice is turning the page
